Edward_R_Murrow
Arcane
So, yeah, I've been playing a bit of Fallout: New Faggot lately, because Gamefly decides that sending something from the bottom of my queue is a better idea than sending the game I've been awaiting for 2 months. Both even had the same listed availability/chance-to-ship. Whatever. Can't sweat the small stuff too much, I guess.
It's a conflicted experience. There's a lot of good in this game, and it does some great things.
-It's nice to see a Fallout game that finally bears resemblance to the first two, even if it draws a lot more from Fallout 2 than I'd like. The old factions are more correct to the setting (the Brotherhood are mostly xenophobes hiding in a bunker again), and most of the new factions are done well enough, with one glaring exception.
-This game does a stupendous job when it comes to peppering in stat and skill checks. There are a ton of them, spread across the skills and stats, and in many dialogues throughout the game so far. I'd say it does a better job on this than any other game I've played to date. Put it this way, I've wished I had a lot more points in Barter on more than one occasion. There are choices galore too, most quests having at least two options, some having more. The faction system is pretty nice too, if a little prone to exploitation, and a little too gamey at times.
-Quest design is very spotty. Some are excellent, like the interrogation of a prisoner, which consists of a lot more than just picking the [WIN]-tagged dialogue line. Unfortunately, too many quests devolve into "go here; kill/take this", with maybe a Speech/Barter/Intelligence check to avoid a fight or save some caps. Too many revolve around combat and exploring the wilderness or dungeons, which is to say any quests that do this in the Fallout 3 engine are a amount in excess. Still, the game does pretty well overall.
But the rest isn't so great, dragging the game down a lot
-The gameworld is a bit too fake with a side order of themepark feeling. Some things just don't make a whole lot of sense. Why do bone-nosed chem addicts have access to nice energy weapons? I know it's for gameplay progression reasons, but it's still retarded. The biggest thing here is Caesar's Legion. I can stomach the Roman Empire motif, even down to the costumes...it's pretty dumb, but I'm willing to roll with most things...except how these guys are a threat. Most seem to use swords. They should be massacred by the NCR, except they aren't because they have "numbers" or some bullshit. They could be an interesting tribal/raider faction, but really shouldn't have gotten the promotion to the Brotherhood's position as a credible threat to the NCR.
-The combat of the game is absolute shit, probably because Fallout 3 was absolute shit in this department too. Combat is a fucking travesty, with some of the worst gunplay I've had the displeasure of experiencing. In Fallout 3 I stuck mostly to the Small Guns like shotguns, magnums, repeaters etc. They didn't feel great, but they weren't the awful mess that big guns and energy weapons have been. In addition to having some disgusting models (look at those boxy laser weapons) the energy weapons feel more like laser tag than weapons of war, having very little feel at all. Enemies are the same idiocy as all Bethesda games, being utterly defeated by things like jumping atop a small rock if they are melee combatants, and showcasing moronic behavior at range. Standing still while firing (poorly) is still their main tactic.
-Exploration seems better than Fallout 3 so far, in that it isn't a shit-fest of copy-paste dungeons with level-scaled enemies dotting the landscape, waiting for an autistic hero to clean out every one of them and catalogue just how many fucking burnt-out pre-war books (and other assorted useless shit) are in each one. It still seems like most of what I've found off the beaten path, going of the roads, has been nothing but combat heavy stuff. More interesting combat stuff, like fighting ghoulified NCR troopers in a town hit by a dirty bomb, but still combat stuff, and still quite shitty.
So Bros, I'm at a crossroads. This game has a lot of good, but a lot of shit too. I really want to have fun with a new Fallout game, but I don't know if the rest of New Vegas is more good stuff or shit.
I'm at Vegas now, kicking around the outside, doing quests for the NCR, the Caravan, and the Brotherhood. Most of the quests I have on my plate now seem shitty...should I keep going with this game? Have I gotten most of the good stuff, or is the best yet to come? And how would I best procede in a way to avoid the seemingly high amount of shit-content?
It's a conflicted experience. There's a lot of good in this game, and it does some great things.
-It's nice to see a Fallout game that finally bears resemblance to the first two, even if it draws a lot more from Fallout 2 than I'd like. The old factions are more correct to the setting (the Brotherhood are mostly xenophobes hiding in a bunker again), and most of the new factions are done well enough, with one glaring exception.
-This game does a stupendous job when it comes to peppering in stat and skill checks. There are a ton of them, spread across the skills and stats, and in many dialogues throughout the game so far. I'd say it does a better job on this than any other game I've played to date. Put it this way, I've wished I had a lot more points in Barter on more than one occasion. There are choices galore too, most quests having at least two options, some having more. The faction system is pretty nice too, if a little prone to exploitation, and a little too gamey at times.
-Quest design is very spotty. Some are excellent, like the interrogation of a prisoner, which consists of a lot more than just picking the [WIN]-tagged dialogue line. Unfortunately, too many quests devolve into "go here; kill/take this", with maybe a Speech/Barter/Intelligence check to avoid a fight or save some caps. Too many revolve around combat and exploring the wilderness or dungeons, which is to say any quests that do this in the Fallout 3 engine are a amount in excess. Still, the game does pretty well overall.
But the rest isn't so great, dragging the game down a lot
-The gameworld is a bit too fake with a side order of themepark feeling. Some things just don't make a whole lot of sense. Why do bone-nosed chem addicts have access to nice energy weapons? I know it's for gameplay progression reasons, but it's still retarded. The biggest thing here is Caesar's Legion. I can stomach the Roman Empire motif, even down to the costumes...it's pretty dumb, but I'm willing to roll with most things...except how these guys are a threat. Most seem to use swords. They should be massacred by the NCR, except they aren't because they have "numbers" or some bullshit. They could be an interesting tribal/raider faction, but really shouldn't have gotten the promotion to the Brotherhood's position as a credible threat to the NCR.
-The combat of the game is absolute shit, probably because Fallout 3 was absolute shit in this department too. Combat is a fucking travesty, with some of the worst gunplay I've had the displeasure of experiencing. In Fallout 3 I stuck mostly to the Small Guns like shotguns, magnums, repeaters etc. They didn't feel great, but they weren't the awful mess that big guns and energy weapons have been. In addition to having some disgusting models (look at those boxy laser weapons) the energy weapons feel more like laser tag than weapons of war, having very little feel at all. Enemies are the same idiocy as all Bethesda games, being utterly defeated by things like jumping atop a small rock if they are melee combatants, and showcasing moronic behavior at range. Standing still while firing (poorly) is still their main tactic.
-Exploration seems better than Fallout 3 so far, in that it isn't a shit-fest of copy-paste dungeons with level-scaled enemies dotting the landscape, waiting for an autistic hero to clean out every one of them and catalogue just how many fucking burnt-out pre-war books (and other assorted useless shit) are in each one. It still seems like most of what I've found off the beaten path, going of the roads, has been nothing but combat heavy stuff. More interesting combat stuff, like fighting ghoulified NCR troopers in a town hit by a dirty bomb, but still combat stuff, and still quite shitty.
So Bros, I'm at a crossroads. This game has a lot of good, but a lot of shit too. I really want to have fun with a new Fallout game, but I don't know if the rest of New Vegas is more good stuff or shit.
I'm at Vegas now, kicking around the outside, doing quests for the NCR, the Caravan, and the Brotherhood. Most of the quests I have on my plate now seem shitty...should I keep going with this game? Have I gotten most of the good stuff, or is the best yet to come? And how would I best procede in a way to avoid the seemingly high amount of shit-content?